Chapter Four
FOUR
A heavy tread on the narrow staircase made Eleanor glad her little house was solidly built of Cornish granite.
In relative terms, DI Scumble was equally solidly built, but large.
As he stepped through the front door of the flat, left open for his expected arrival, his head brushed the lintel and his shoulders brushed the doorposts.
Teazle let fly a volley of barks. Her voice was surprisingly deep for such a tiny dog. Scumble looked a trifle taken aback, and Eleanor had to suppress a quite inappropriate urge to reassure the monster that the mite would not hurt him.
“Hush, Teazle,” she said instead. “Do sit down, Mr Scumble. Would you like coffee or tea?”
“Not for me, thank you, ma’am,” he said severely, looking round the room for a chair fit to contain his bulk and uphold his weight.
The only possibility was one of the old wooden dining chairs, genuine hand-turned beech, a donation from a farmhouse kitchen that had moved “up” to steel and vinyl.
Foreseeing the difficulty, Eleanor had tactfully turned one with its back to the table.
As he moved towards it, the floor creaking beneath him, Megan came into view behind him.
She looked rather apprehensive. Remembering Jocelyn’s reprimand, Eleanor didn’t jump up to embrace her niece.
She didn’t even venture to offer her a cup of tea after Scumble’s adamant rejection of refreshment.
A warm but silent smile seemed to be the best choice.
She was rewarded as Megan’s apprehension lightened. Squeezing past her boss, the detective sergeant sat down at the table and took out her notebook and ball-point pen.
“Did the poor boy have any identification on him, Inspector?” Eleanor asked. “Do you know who he is?”
“I’m here to ask the questions, madam. You’ve already told me you didn’t know him. I must ask again, for the official record: Were you acquainted with the victim or do you remember ever having seen him before?”
“No, though for a moment I did wonder—”
“But you’re quite sure now?” he interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Right, tell me about yesterday evening.” It was an order, not a request.
From the corner of her eye, Eleanor saw Jocelyn’s lips tighten. “I came home just before it began to get dark,” she said hastily.
“Where from?”
Eleanor waved her hands. “Oh, all over the place. I was driving, collecting donations, you see. For the shop. And then I walked the dog on the cliffs, not far north of Port Mabyn. There’s a footpath sign and a stile but I’m not sure if that particular bit of cliff has a name,” she added dubiously.
“Oh, but I saw Constable Leacock drive past just after I stopped, and he waved, so he knows where I was and he can tell you, if you need to know. But it was earlier, really still afternoon at that point.”
“And then,” said Scumble with an air of dogged patience, “you came home.”
“Yes, and I parked right outside the shop. I know it’s no parking and a double yellow line but it was just for unloading.
I had some heavy boxes of books in the boot.
Dear Nick came to carry them in for me. Nicholas Gresham, the artist next door.
Some of the children helped with the lighter stuff, too. ”
“Which children?”
“Ummmm . . .” The only face that appeared to her mind’s eye was the dead boy’s. But the inspector was waiting. “. . . you see, the village children are all very sweet about helping, most of them at least. They understand that it’s all for a good cause. Now, who was it who turned up last night?”
“That’s what I’m asking you, madam.”
“Nick is sure to remember . . . Oh!” The memory of that narrowly averted pinch returned.
She mustn’t become a dithery old lady just because that was what he obviously considered her to be.
“Of course, it was Donna from the Trelawney Arms. And she was organising the two little ones from the Chinese restaurant, Lionel and Ivy.”
“So you, Gresham, and these three children all carried stuff in. Where did you put it?”
“In the stockroom, where I found the . . . the body this morning. We put everything at the back there to be sorted. He—the boy—was hidden by some of the clothes I’d brought in.” To her dismay, she felt her lips quiver and tears collect in her eyes.
With a defiant glance at Scumble, Jocelyn got up, took Eleanor’s empty mug, and went into the kitchen. A moment later she returned with a full mug of steaming tea which she put into Eleanor’s hands. “Drink,” she said.
A revivifying gulp steadied her, and she went on, “You see, the clothes were spilled and tumbled. I was tidying—”
“We’ll get to that shortly. Go on with last night.”
“Well, he certainly wasn’t there when we unloaded the Incorruptible.”
“The what?”
“Sorry, the car. It’s pea-green, and you know what Carlyle said about Robespierre . . .”
Scumble’s scowl suggested he not only didn’t, he had never heard of either gentleman.
Eleanor hastened to explain. “He called him ‘the sea-green incorruptible.’ It’s Nick’s pun, not mine.”
“Could we please get on with the events of yesterday evening?”
“Of course. Where were we?”
The inspector gave her an old-fashioned look and addressed Jocelyn. “If it’s not too much trouble, Mrs Stearns, a cup of coffee would not come amiss. Or tea, whichever is easier. Black. And as strong as possible.”
“Certainly, Inspector,” Jocelyn said graciously. She went back to the kitchen.
“You put all the stuff you had collected in the back room, Mrs Trewynn. At that time there was no body in the room. What happened next?”
“The children went home. Nick told me he’d sold a painting and invited me out to supper to celebrate.”
“What time was this?”
“Time? I don’t . . . Oh, I remember, Nick asked me the time, and I couldn’t tell him because my watch had stopped.”
“Didn’t you come up here then? You have a clock.” He gestured at the pretty flowered-china timepiece on the mantel. Eleanor had agonised over whether she could afford it, at last rationalising that the purchase price would benefit LonStar.
“I didn’t look at it. I just had to feed Teazle and change into something respectable before Nick came to pick me up.
And comb my hair,” she added conscientiously as Jocelyn returned with mugs for Scumble and Megan.
Eleanor considered her natural curls could survive most things looking reasonably neat. Jocelyn disagreed.
“The clock’s slow anyway,” Scumble muttered, checking his wristwatch.
“It runs slow. Anyway, I was ready when Nick came back from parking the Incorr—the car for me. And he had changed, too. We walked up to the Wreckers—that’s the other pub,” Eleanor explained, as Scumble looked blank.
“Other?”
“Other than the Trelawney Arms, which is where Donna lives. Which is why—But you don’t want to know that.”
“What don’t I want to know?” the inspector asked suspiciously.
“Just that we went to the Wreckers, which is up the other hill and slightly more expensive, because Donna . . . er . . . she’s taken a bit of a fancy to Nick, I’m afraid.”
“She’s a little hussy,” said Jocelyn in her forthright way, “and blatantly pursues him.”
“You’re right,” Scumble admitted. “I didn’t want to know.”
Eleanor beamed at him, seeing Megan, safe behind his back, smother a giggle.
“We had a drink at the Wreckers,” she said, “then walked back down and up this side to Chin’s, the Chinese restaurant, where Ivy and Lionel live.
We had a very nice dinner. Much nicer than practically anything I ever ate in China.
” She was torn between launching into her speech on poverty in China, followed by a plea for a donation, and teasing the detective by starting to list what she and Nick had eaten, followed by an assertion that he didn’t want to know that.
Megan’s agonised expression deterred her. “Then we came home.”
Unaware of his narrow escape, Scumble said gloomily, “I suppose you don’t know what time any of this took place.”
“My dear Inspector!” Jocelyn was shocked. “It’s terribly rude for a woman being taken out for the evening to keep her eye on the time. Unless,” she added, to be fair, “she has an urgent appointment.”
“I didn’t,” Eleanor put in quickly, before Scumble could explode. “I came up here—”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual on the way up? The door was still locked?”
“Oh dear! I’m afraid I’m not sure. In fact, I’m not at all sure I locked it when I left. I know, Megan, Joce, I promised, and I do try, but the trouble is, I’ve spent so many years in places without doors, let alone locks—”
“Am I to understand,” asked Scumble in despair, “that both the street door and the door to this flat may or may not have been locked when you left and when you returned.”
“Exactly,” said Eleanor.
“And the stockroom?”
“I’m sure I locked that.” She gave a guilty glance at Jocelyn. “Fairly sure. I distinctly remember locking something.” The car?
“None of the doors shows any sign of being forced. I shall be asking you, Mrs Stearns, who has keys to the shop and storeroom. Now, Mrs Trewynn, did you go out again for any reason?”
“No. Well, yes. Not really. I let Teazle out of the back door, at the end of the passage, by the stockroom door, and I stood at the door watching her. The light was on up here, and she being white, I could see her though it was dark out. She came at once when I called her—she’s very good about that—but when she came in she started to snuffle at the stockroom door.
I thought perhaps we had mice again. I called her away and we came up and went to bed.
” She bit her lip. “If I’d investigated, could I have helped—? ”
“No. He appears to have died more or less instantly. The dog’s behaviour would seem to indicate he was killed while you were out for the evening. You’re sure you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary while you stood at the back door, or after you came upstairs?”